Reflections on flourishing people, spaces and places TEDxQMU.

Background: As part of the launch of a new nursing strategic framework for the Division of Nursing at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, we decided to host a TEDx event with the theme of ‘Flourishing People, Spaces and Places’. This theme is the core of the vision for nursing in the division which focuses on flourishing people, spaces and places as the bases for inspiring nurses. Launching the strategy with this key phrase as the central theme of the TEDx event allowed students, staff, practitioners and our community to see, sense and be challenged about what flourishing means. In addition it enabled these different stakeholders to engage with and become part of the nursing vision as we move forward. Making the launch of the strategy a TEDx event and not a nursing conference offered an exciting and fresh way of engaging with stakeholders. We also discovered that, to date, there had been no TED talks on flourishing. The nursing team considered the TEDx formula to be a creative and meaningful way to engage with our key stakeholders. As nurse academics we recognise the need to continue to find new ways to engage in creativity and to use creative learning strategies in our practice (McCormack et al., 2015). The TEDx ethos/formula, which differs from the normal conference package, offered us this opportunity. This paper provides a reflective overview, using a variety of media, of our experiences of organising and delivering a TEDx event with the core theme of flourishing. Objectives of the TEDxQMU event: • To introduce the TEDx formula to a new audience and to deliver a new idea to students, staff and our community • To allow our audience to be challenged on a personal and professional level by a diverse set of speakers on what flourishing meant to them • To launch our strategy and vision for the future in an inclusive and creative way • To explore, through engaging with different media, what flourishing meant to individuals and groups Conclusions: This reflective paper has allowed us to share our experiences of a new and creative way of engaging with staff and colleagues across a university and our wider community, to not only share our strategy but to challenge and facilitate flourishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]